Humanities Center, Visiting Scholar: Megan Corbin, "Haunted Objects: Spectral Testimony and the Role of the Material in Remembering the Traumatic Past," Thursday, October 17th, 5:30 PM, ZOOM

Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024 5:30 p.m.

Visiting Scholar: Megan Corbin, "Haunted Objects: Spectral Testimony and the Role of the Material in Remembering the Traumatic Past," Thursday, October 17th, 5:30 PM, Zoom

Register for Zoom Webinar: https://csuchico.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZModeqqqzwsEtTEycUjDpv1pUo_FOPusHKB#/registration

*This talk is sponsored by the Chico State Women's Philanthropy Council.

How can the material world help survivors of trauma narrate their experiences? How can an object stand in for the lost subject and create meaning? How does the surviving subject's relationship to the material world shift during their "limit experience"? And how can this changed relationship be communicated to others and to the future? Drawing from the research presented in her book Haunted Objects: Spectral Testimony in the Southern Cone Post-dictatorship, this talk explores these questions through examining the cultural production of survivors of the dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay in the second-half of the twentieth century. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to literary and cultural analysis that combines theory from Testimonial Studies, Holocaust Studies, Material Culture Studies, Memory Studies, Trauma Theory, Spectral Theory, and Museum Theory, Corbin offers the concept of "spectral testimony" as a theoretical framework for creating a scene of witnessing through objects that is capable of fostering empathy and understanding, contributing to the Southern Cone Human Rights Community's pleas for Truth, Memory, and Justice for the past.

Megan Corbin is Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She is Editor of the critical literary journal College Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press) and Managing Editor of the book series Hispanic Issues (Vanderbilt University Press). Her research examines the cultural production of the Southern Cone Post-dictatorship period, with a specific emphasis on testimonial writing and material cultural studies.

Humanities Center

Erin K. Kelly, Director

ekkelly@csuchico.edu